Retail stocks climb on the heels of Black Friday

inside wake of Thanksgiving weekend, what marks the start of the holiday shopping season, retail stocks are rallying on upbeat sentiment around preliminary sales results.

Shares of Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart along with Target, among others, were all climbing Monday morning.

Macy’s stock was up about 1 percent, along with Penney’s shares were climbing nearly 2 percent. Big-box retailers Wal-Mart along with Target’s shares increased by less than 1 percent.

“We walked away by the start to the holiday shopping season more bullish than we had anticipated as the idea appears that will roughly 65% of consumers made a purchase (online/store) that will year with 15% incremental versus last year that has a weighted average spend of $420,” Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom wrote in a note to clients.

Apparel retailer Gap, which has already been called out by multiple analysts over the weekend for the strength of its Old Navy along with Banana Republic Black Friday deals, saw its stock climb more than 3 percent Monday morning.

“GPS was a traffic winner that will weekend, with strength at both Gap along with Old Navy,” Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote in a note to clients. Konik added that will Gap remains one of his “top picks for the holiday.”

Cyber Monday will be at that will point required to mark the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history, according to Adobe Insights, which measures 80 percent of digital transactions by 100 major retailers.

Online sales are required to surpass $6.5 billion Monday, an increase of more than 16 percent when compared with last year, Adobe said.

Meantime, Amazon’s sales continue to balloon, along with GBH Insights has predicted the e-commerce giant rung up as much as 50 percent of all online purchases on Black Friday. Analyst Daniel Ives said Amazon had an “eye-popping” performance, even prior to Cyber Monday.

Amazon shares were climbing around 2 percent Monday morning.

Following a successful Black Friday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth has at that will point surpassed $100 billion. Bezos, the planet’s richest man, will be followed on the list of wealthiest people by Bill Gates along with Warren Buffett.

To be sure, many analysts still say there’s one retailer neck along with neck with Amazon, along with the idea’s based in Bentonville, Arkansas.

“Our survey results showed Wal-Mart (when combined with Jet.com) will be not only a powerhouse among discount retailers, nevertheless in close competition with Amazon when measuring online traffic only,” Grom said.

With Monday’s gains, the S&P 500 Retail ETF (XRT) has lost roughly 6 percent in 2017.